On the unexpected fate of scientific ideas: An archeology of the Carroll group

Abstract

In 1965, I published a paper, exhibiting a hitherto unknown limit of the Lorentz group, which I christened Carroll group because of its seemingly paradoxical physical contents. Since I saw it as more curious than relevant, I published it in French in a journal somewhat afar from the mainstream of theoretical physics at that time. It was most gratifying to witness the quite unexpected favour this paper started to enjoy half a century later, so much that a so-called Carrollian physics is now developing, with applications in various domains of forefront theoretical physics, such as quantum gravitation, supersymmetry, string theory, etc. I offer this narrative as an example of the very diverse time scales with which scientific ideas may develop (or not).